Published April 16, 2026 01:23PM
For 16 years, I drove what my friends somewhat affectionately called “a grandma car.” It was old, it was tan, and it had indeed belonged to someone’s grandmother prior to me. Even when I first got it, it showed its age. The cassette deck didn’t work. The driver’s door randomly locked itself. The radio turned off if you used the power windows. These things were, at times, annoying.
But the car was mine, and we experienced countless milestones together. I learned how to change my car’s oil. Rotate tires. Use E-ZPass. Drive up and down the East Coast using only an atlas. As long as I kept up with my maintenance, I figured I could drive it forever.
But the year it turned 25, things got complicated. Its undercarriage was so rusty that my regular mechanic refused to do further work on it. Then the car developed a gas leak, among other problems, with repairs approaching five figures. Intellectually, I understood it was time to let it go. Unfortunately, knowing this didn’t make trading it in any easier.
Other people were excited for me, from my friends and family to the people at the dealership; they congratulated me on the upgrade and said things like, “You must be thrilled!” But I wasn’t. Even driving my much newer, fancier car, I felt like I’d lost a friend.
After the days turned into weeks and I still felt this sense of loss, I Googled phrases like “sad about change.” That led me to grief resources. The information I found, though, rarely addressed devastation over a physical object, which left me feeling guilty. I thought, “Why couldn’t I just be happy with the car upgrade? Other people had real problems. How dare I (over)react like someone had died?”
What Is Material Grief?
After reading dozens of articles and listening to hours of podcasts, I learned that grief over sentimental objects, sometimes called material grief, is quite common. These items can include special gifts, childhood possessions, items that once belonged to a deceased relative—and, yes, cars. (I found a couple Reddit posts—”Grieving your car. Normal?” and “Grieving the sale of my car.“—that have more than 600 comments between them!) Regardless of the exact item in question, it’s normal to grieve material losses, even if we talk about them less than other types of grief.
It’s precisely because we don’t talk about these losses that it’s easy to feel like we’re overreacting, as I initially did. Beatriz Albina, family nurse practitioner, life coach, and author of End Emotional Outsourcing discussed a very relevant Buddhist parable on her podcast Feminist Wellness (where she also discussed grief over objects). It’s about two arrows we experience in life. The first arrow, for our purposes, is the moment that your item is lost or damaged. The second arrow is when we shame ourselves for having feelings about that loss. There isn’t much we can do about the first arrow, but the second is optional. Grief is normal. Grief over an object is legitimate. You aren’t crazy, overreacting, or selfish.
How to Grieve Material Things
“Grief isn’t a finite resource that gets used up on the ‘wrong’ things,” says Albina. You’re not sparing anyone by refusing to grieve your stuffed animal. You’re just making yourself suffer twice.” Naming my emotions as grief helped me realize that there were lots of resources available online for grief—and a lot of it came in the form of yoga and meditation.
1. Move Your Body
Having practiced yoga for six years, I’ve long known that movement is a powerful way to connect with my body and emotions. Heart-opening sequences are often recommended for moving through grief, such as this 15-pose flow, as are grounding and restorative practices such as this yoga nidra practice. On YouTube, I tried grief-focused instruction by SaraBethYoga and Yoga with Adriene. For me, yoga didn’t have to be restorative or heart-opening to be helpful—any form of movement on the mat helped me get out of my head.
Another personal favorite for me, as a former athlete, was treating other types of movement as meditation. As noted by the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, movement can hone mental awareness, whether it’s stretching or taking a walk around town, as it can provide something other than your sadness to focus on, such as body sensations or the world around you. The same can be true of sports and other physical activities.
2. Try Meditation
As someone who aims to do a 10-minute guided meditation each day, I switched to a grief-focused meditation and experienced mixed results. Grief meditations I found on YouTube, for instance, often focused on the loss of loved ones or pets. (If that sort of incongruity doesn’t bother you, you might get better mileage—pun intended—out of grief meditations.)
I had better results with more general guided meditations on letting go, specifically videos that focused less on the loss and more on feeling the emotions in the body.
3. Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness exercises can also help you grieve, according to Albina. For instance, she recommends the practice of pendulation, or altering your attention between the grief and something that feels neutral. The latter could be something simple in your environment, like a shadow on the floor or the feeling of your body in your chair.
“You’re teaching your nervous system that it can touch the hard thing and then come back to something safer,” says Albina. This can provide a sense that you won’t be swallowed by grief.
Albina also recommends sitting or lying down somewhere quiet, putting one hand on your chest and one on your belly, and just breathing. Ask yourself where you feel the loss in your body. Is it in your chest? Your throat? Behind your eyes? “You don’t have to fix it or move it,” Albina said. “Just witness it. That act of turning toward—of saying I see you, I feel you, I’m not going to pretend you’re not here—is itself healing.”
4. Perform a Ritual
When we lose a loved one, we perform specific rituals for the dead and for the bereaved. Your ritual doesn’t have to be a funeral; instead, Albina suggests writing a letter to your lost object. Or you can do anything that feels special to you and honors your relationship with your lost object.
On the day I traded in my car, I chose to take photos of it in the parking lot. I very specifically wanted a video of its horn, although getting this video involved beeping at the dealership. The couple who were shopping two vehicles over from me most certainly thought I was crazy for beeping at nothing, but I did it anyway, for me.
Other options could include journaling, drawing, or creating a photo album, shadow box, or scrapbook. Even if scrapbooking isn’t your style, holding onto a piece of your item is common. For example, some car lovers keep their trunk emblem or an extra key after their vehicle is totaled. A broken heirloom can be upcycled or turned into something new, like this china plate that was damaged and turned into earrings.
A ritual can also be as simple as talking to the item or even to yourself. If you need a starting point, Albina recommended, “This mattered to me, and I’m going to miss it.” The goal isn’t to get a response, but to acknowledge your grief.
5. Talk It Out
Sharing your feelings with friends and family can help release grief. For me, this involved texting friends and family when I was feeling down about the trade-in, often starting with something simple like, “I know it’s dumb, but I’m bummed about the car.” (It’s actually not dumb at all, I later learned.) This opened a conversation where I could talk about my feelings and move through them.
If you’re not a texter, a coffee date can be a great way to get out of the house, especially if you’ve been ruminating on your loss for a while or isolating yourself; a phone call can give you a semi-private space to process, even if it feels silly to get choked up about, say, an old childhood toy. Asking for help isn’t a weakness; it can bring real relief. The American Cancer Society has talking points for discussing the loss of a loved one, which are easy enough to adapt to an item: discuss the loss, your memories prior to the loss, and your experience moving forward after the loss.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, reaching out to a trained professional, such as a counselor or a therapist, is always an option.
Finally, A Reminder
Navigating grief over objects isn’t fundamentally different than working through other types of grief, says Albina. “What’s different is how much permission we give ourselves to feel it,” she explains.
Feel your loss. It’s okay to grieve. It’s okay even if other people think it’s silly. (And plenty of people thought I was being silly—I let myself be sad anyway.) It’s okay to need time. It’s okay if your grief changes, too. You might feel it more on some days than others, or feel angry instead of sad sometimes. Grief and its many expressions are a normal part of the human experience. For me, this means remembering that I can always text a friend, or lace up my sneakers and go for a walk—which always helps me dodge that second arrow of shame.